Ignorance is Bliss?
by SuperPaperBag
Summary: One day the members of Grand Chase realize that they know nothing about demons. In an attempt to learn more, they sit Zero down and ask him a few questions, only to realize that they were probably better off not knowing. Oneshot.


Dinner was always an interesting time at the Grand Chase Headquarters. There were always several conversations going on at the same time, and there was never a dull moment. The topics discussed were always interesting—a chaser would often have an interesting tale to tell from the mission they had completed that day. One day, though, the rather interesting subject of demons was somehow brought up, and all of the members of the Grand Chase realized that they knew almost nothing about demons at all.

Sieghart, of course, had a few choice words to say about demons, especially a certain magenta-haired demon that had put him in a death-like state around 600 years ago.

However, besides the fact that the four demons of the Chase were never present at the dinner table and that demons seemed to greatly enjoying slaughter, no one had anything else to say about the strange race. At first no one seemed to really be bothered by this, but after about five minutes of uncomfortable silence Knight Master stated that knowledge was power and that they should all attempt to learn more about demons.

The mortal members of the Chase first attempted to make contact with Rufus. The bounty hunter seemed to be the most ideal choice because he was only half-demon and his half-brother was Lass. The thief was sent to talk with Rufus, but apparently the half-demon did not want to talk and ended up firing blanks at his half-sibling.

They next endeavored to make contact with Ley, but her butler refused to even let Knight Master near her. Jeeves seemed to have been given orders not to let anyone near his mistress for the next few days.

Dio at least agreed to speak with them. However, after they told him what they were asking about, he scoffed and stated, "I've never really been interested in that kind of thing. If you want to know about demon society and behavior and all that shit, go talk to Zero. He's always reading about that sort of thing."

The wanderer agreed to answer their questions and was now sitting with other human members of the Grand Chase around the dining room table.

No one could tell from his blank, emotionless expression, but he was quite nervous. The wanderer despised being the center of attention, and with almost every pair of eyes on him he wanted nothing more than to leave the room as quickly as possible. In search of some sort of comfort, he had placed Grandark in his lap and was gripping the sword's hilt firmly. Zero remained quiet, silently awaiting the first question directed towards him.

Eventually Knight Master inquired, "Why is it that you four are never present during dinner?"

"…Eating is a luxury for my kind, not a necessity," he replied. "Even so, most demons find human food bland and unappetizing." Zero could predict the next question, and he was not looking forward to giving the answer.

"So what do they eat, then?" Arme inquired from the other side of the table.

"Souls."

The entire atmosphere of the room changed. The tension in the air suddenly became so thick that one could cut it with a knife.

"How could you? That's wrong!"

The demon had no idea who exactly had made the exclamation; nevertheless he was prepared to respond. "Yes, perhaps. However, one does not blame a fox for killing a hare. Humans consume other animals, as well. It is essentially the same concept. Also, demons do not always succeed, and there is the possibility that the human involved can overcome or even kill the demon."

Zero decided to survey the faces of those around him and noticed expressions that varied from shock to fear to disgust. The wanderer had predicted such a reaction, but even so he felt a bit hurt. "Can we please move on?" he requested calmly.

"Yes, that is an excellent idea," Knight Master agreed.

Ronan (for whatever reason) raised his hand and waited until he was acknowledged before asking, "Do demons have souls?"

"No. We have cores."

"What's the difference?" queried a voice from a different side of the room.

"When a human's soul is removed, the human dies," the demon explained, his voice as calm and unwavering as ever. "When a demon's core is removed, the demon will continue to live until the core is shattered. A demon's core can only be destroyed after it has been extracted from the body. Possessing a core instead of a soul is the defining feature of a demon."

A silence ensued, only to be interrupted after several moments by Sieghart, who asked, "What is a demon's greatest weakness?" Zero could clearly see the lust for revenge in the gladiator's eyes.

Despite the fact that he was actually a combination of a few different races, the wanderer considered himself to be a demon first and foremost. If he revealed a demon's true weaknesses, he would be betraying his own kind—especially his only friend, who was likely the target of Sieghart's revenge. If he refused to answer the question, he left the Chasers at a greater risk of death by demonic attack. As long as the Grand Chase was still beneficial to him and his goal of defeating Void, he intended to keep them all alive.

Eventually the demon resolved to warn Dio later and stated, "…Demons by nature are extremely proud. The majority of them are also quite arrogant, contentious, and stubborn. Due to this it takes little to no effort to goad them into fights, even ones they already know they cannot win. Also, demons in general are very instinctive and tend to rely almost solely on brute force. If you can get a demon sufficiently caught up in his or her emotions and have a strategy it is tremendously easier to defeat him or her."

The humans around him quickly began to talk quietly amongst each other concerning the information they had just learned. While the others continued to converse, Zero buried himself in his own thoughts and stared at the table in front of him blankly. He wondered if any of them had noticed that the wanderer was almost the complete opposite of what he had described. The silver-haired demon had been trained to completely oppose his nature as a demon in the hopes that it would help him to achieve his lifetime goal. Zero was lenient instead of stubborn; insecure instead of arrogant. He avoided confrontation as much as he possibly could, always attempted to keep himself void of emotion, and was overall extremely passive.

The insecurity was the absolute worst of his discrepancies from the norm. It was slowly consuming him from the inside, and Grandark's growing influence over him was not helping. Zero constantly was thinking about how he would never be able to match Void's power, no matter how hard he trained or how many hours he put into researching his opponent. Void was simply too far ahead in terms of power, and there was not enough time in the world for the wanderer to catch up. The demon was constantly being reminded that without his sword, he was simply nothing, as the name "Zero" implied.

Occasionally the demon wondered why his master could not allow him to contain even a shred of the confidence their race was known for, but then he would be reminded of the time he had directly asked Oz why he was forced to be so diffident. He recalled quite clearly that the older demon had calmly looked up at Zero with flame-colored eyes and stated, "I would prefer to have you insecure and alive than confident and dead. Now cease questioning me; I know what I am doing. I am aware that this is difficult for you; however everyone in any world has their own inner strife to deal with. Believe me, I of all beings would know."

"Zero? Are you ok?"

Snapped from his thoughts, the wanderer slowly raised his head and noticed that every eye was on him once again. "I am fine," he replied blankly. Why did everyone assume that there was something wrong with him when he was deep in thought? He was merely thinking.

"In your opinion, who is the most dangerous demon here?"

"Rufus."

"What? Why him?"

"I do not know what his why he has joined the Grand Chase," the wanderer stated. "Dio and I have joined the Chase because we both have our own personal interests to pursue and joining this organization would assist us. Ley has joined in order to keep an eye on Dio. Rufus, though…why he has joined is still a mystery to me. Until you learn of his intentions you cannot be sure that he will not betray you."

The others were silent once more. After the silence lasted longer than ten minutes the wanderer silently stood from his chair and placed Grandark on his back. He was about to leave the room when Lass' voice stopped him.

The thief avoided making eye contact with Zero and said, "I've been seeing Rufus walking around a lot really late at night. Should I be concerned?"

"…I do not know much concerning Rufus' personal life; however just as demons do not need to eat they do not require sleep, and it is natural that he would continue to go about his business at such a late hour."

"Oh."

Zero then promptly left the room without another word, intent on locating the stygian and warning him about Sieghart's possible plan for revenge.

The Chasers simply sat in their seats around the table, each of them occupied with their own thoughts. None of them knew exactly what they had been expecting in their pursuit of answers, but it was certainly not what they had just heard. The way such information had been delivered was unnerving, as well. Zero's voice had never once broken free of the steady, calm tone the wanderer always seemed to use.

It was not until the demon had left that the Chasers realized that they had not asked even half of the questions that they had planned to ask. They had simply forgotten all about the initial plan when Zero began speaking. It was as if their bodies had been subconsciously telling them not to prevent the demon from leaving their presence.

All of them seemed to eventually come to the realization that there was no possible way that demons and humans could ever truly understand each other. There was simply too large a gap between the two races, and the distaste the two races seemed to have for each other seemed to be hard-wired into their bodies.

To be honest, the Chasers were all more confused than when they had started. They were all fairly sure that they had been better off not knowing anything about demons.

Author's Notes:

-When I use the term "human" in this story, I'm basically just referring to non-demons. I know that Sieghart's technically an immortal, Ryan and Lire are elves, etc.

-Why do my fics seem to start out with dinner? xD

-The whole "core" thing basically came from Sanctum of Destruction where you have to hit that core thing to defeat the boss. So I took inspiration from that and made stuff up. Yay?

-Considering 3 out of the 4 demons Grand Chase has shown us have really similar behaviors, I assume that's the norm for demons and Zero's just different because he was trained to be different.

-lol, Oz actually gets a piece of dialogue! By the way, he's kind of referring to the fact that he's really the one who wants to defeat Void, yet he can't because he's old. It's reminiscent of Chapter 2 from my threeshot with Zero and Dio.

-Actually, quite a bit of this is similar to "Friendship is Never Absolute". If you liked this sort of way of interpreting the characters, go check out that story. I know I interpret Zero quite differently from a lot of people, but he doesn't really have a personality to begin with, so there's not much to go on.

-You'll notice that a lot of characters are unnamed in this and often you can't exactly identify which of the other Chasers are speaking. That's because I'm not really good at writing for the other characters, so they're not really mentioned individually, but rather as a whole.

-Why DID Rufus join the Grand Chase, anywho? -.-

-Yes, Lass is keeping tabs on his half-brother. No, I'm not implying a pairing between Lass and Rufus. Incest is not good.

-As far as I know, Rufus technically is half-demon, although it's never been explicitly stated by GC. But if we're to say that Lass is completely human and they're half-brothers, I'm guessing Rufus is only half-demon.

-Lol, I know Zero's little introspection just comes the hell outta nowhere. xD I dunno, I felt like putting that in. All of my fics are basically about Zero, so just keep that in mind. There's a few reasons that Zero's answering these questions instead of, say, Dio or Ley.

-I know I didn't explicitly say that demons only ate human souls, but it was implied. I basically just put that "eating souls" thing in there because in just about every other place I see demons they're eating souls and killing people and stuff.

-Yes, in this fic Dio and Zero are friends. Like I mentioned before, this is very reminiscent of my previous threeshot.

-This was unbeta'd, so there will be errors. Thanks for understanding.

-Thanks for reading. Especially if you're a fan of Zero.


End file.
